John Rivers Jr is not a direct ancestor – but rather a great-grand-uncle. Or maybe not so great and grand… LOL He is the brother of my great-grandfather, Gardner Rivers.

John was born in 1865 and can be found on the census for 1870 and 1880 living with his family in Saginaw County, Michigan. However, after the 1880 census he seemingly disappears from any official record that I can find.

Probably 10-15 years ago now, I had heard from a cousin who had talked to one of the older generation before she passed and this cousin told me that according to her, John Jr had moved to the Petoskey area and changed his name to Guy Morrison. Also that he had married a woman by the name of Katy and they had twin girls. Oh, and the reason why he moved and changed his name? Well, that’s because he had killed someone and was trying to avoid the law.

I searched for years to find proof of this and was coming up short. I could indeed find a Guy Morrison with wife Katy and twin girls (among other children) in the 1900 to 1940 censuses in the Petoskey area. I could not find Guy Morrison before 1900 though. This seemed to fit the family story – but I still couldn’t say yes, this was definitely him. There wasn’t anything really connecting this Guy Morrison to my John Rivers Jr except the timeframe fit. And well, that’s just not enough to say for sure.

Then in 2016, I finally was able to make some progress. About a week after my uncle’s funeral, I had this overwhelming urge to research John Jr again (my uncle was my dad’s brother – and this is his side of the family). So, I started searching again. And again, I was coming up empty. Then I decided to check his “other” name – Guy Morrison. That’s when I hit the jackpot. Suddenly there was this family tree on ancestry.com that was posted by a descendant of Guy Morrison, and the little bit that was posted, seemed to fit. So, on a long-shot I contacted the owner of the tree. I explained that I had this family legend that John Rivers Jr changed his name to Guy Morrison and a bit about his family in the Petoskey area.  I left out the part about the murder as I didn’t want to scare off the contact. This cousin replied and shared that the family legend was true – she had the same legend (including as I would later confirm the part about murder). This cousin then shared with me one of the only pictures she had of Guy Morrison – which is posted above.

I compared it to some pictures that I had of some of Gardner and his siblings.

I concluded that since the story matched up and there was a similarity in the pictures between Guy/John and Gardner, Burt, Daniel (James Daniel) and Joseph – who all would be brothers and even a bit of similarity between Mary and Guy too (as poor as the pictures are), that John Jr was this Guy Morrison. But I would prefer to have a bit better proof. Well, I would eventually get that too – in 2017 I was checking my AncestryDNA matches and who would show up – this cousin who is Guy Morrison’s descendant. Doing some quick checks to make sure that the DNA didn’t come from a different ancestor, gave me the proof that I was really looking for. John Rivers Jr is Guy Morrison.

So, this has got me to wondering, about the murder part of the story. Who did John Jr kill? Why did he kill this person? I spent some time going through the Saginaw newspapers on Genealogybank.com and so far have come up empty. There’s only one murder in the area that seemingly went unsolved – but that was in 1881 and was an infant who was found alongside a road. Now, in 1881, John Jr would have been about 16.

He married (as Guy Morrison) Constance Wachoviak in Mount Forest, Bay County, Michigan in May of 1893. Constance went by the nickname Katy in later records.

In checking where Mount Forest is – it very well could be that they married on their way to Petoskey area from the Taymouth Township area. So, if the 1881 baby was who John killed, it seems far fetched that he would wait around another 12 years before taking off and changing his name. It just doesn’t make sense.

At this point, I still don’t know who and why John supposedly killed. I would assume the murder went unsolved – or at the very least his name as John Rivers would be associated with the murder as a possible suspect. After all, why else would he change his name and move away to avoid the police? However, I have yet to find any evidence of it. This will require more digging – and I may never find out the details.